Mom's Surprise 60th Birthday Party

May 31st - As I had previously noted in my blog we threw a surprise 60th birthday party for my mom. Her actual birthday was the 14th of May, but we wanted to wait until Julia was home from her mission. It was the perfect time because we also had Jonathan and Val here and some friends from Colorado (the Whitesides) that are partially responsible for my parents being members of the church. The best part of the surprise was that we had flown in one of my mom's best friends named Gail. It had been over 10 years since they had seen each other.

We had the party at our clubhouse. The plan was that we were all (our family and and the Whitesides) going to meet at my house so that we could go watch a movie. My dad called my cell phone just as my parents were leaving the house so that I would know that we had 20 minutes before they arrive. About 15 minutes later I called them and asked them if they could stop by the clubhouse to "pick up some papers for me from the association". This was the decoy to get mom into the clubhouse. Dad told her it was a box and it might be heavy so he should go in with her. When she came into the room we were all waiting and yelled "Surprise"

She was confused at first and then realized that this was all for her. She went around and hugged everyone in the room.

You can see in the first picture that we had a slide show ready to go. At this point her best friend Gail was hiding behind the door in the kitchen. We didn't want to make her stand there all day so we tried to have my mom sit down to watch the video as quickly as we could. The video was of pictures throughout her life. At the end we had pictures of friends including some of Gail from the 70's. One of the last slides contained a current picture of Gail waving with the caption, "I had really wanted to come for your surprise party............" - the next slide said, "so I did, turn around!" During the slide show we snuck Gail in so that she was standing behind mom. When my mom read the last slide she turned around and screamed "No, no way!" There wasn't a dry eye (at least from the women) in the room. It was awesome!

It is hard to see in this picture but Gail is standing on the left and my mom is bent over on the right.

Gail and my mom hugging.

We really had a great time. I have to thank all the people who kept this quiet so that it could actually be a surprise. Thanks everyone!